Takelma language

Takelma was the language spoken by the Takelma people.

Dialects

• Latgawa dialect, spoken in southwestern Oregon along the upper Rogue River
• Lowland Takelma dialect, spoken in southwestern Oregon in the Rogue Valley

There was possibly a Cow Creek dialect spoken in southwestern Oregon along the South Umpqua River, Myrtle Creek, and Cow Creek.

Genealogical relations

Takelma is a language isolate. Takelma has been considered to be in a Takelman (or Takelma-Kalapuyan) language family together with the Kalapuyan languages (Swadesh 1965). However, a recent paper by Tarpent & Kendall (1998) finds this relationship to be unfounded because of the extremely different morphological structures of Takelma and Kalapuyan. However, there is much hopeful speculation that Takelma (along with Kalapuyan and other language groups) may be part of a proposed Penutian super-family, as suggested by Edward Sapir (1921).

Phonology

Consonants

		Bi­la­bial	Al­veo­lar		Postal­veo­lar or pa­la­tal	Ve­lar		Glot­tal
			cen­tral	la­te­ral		voiced	un- voiced
Plosive	unaspirated	p	t				k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ				kʰ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ				kʼ
Affricate	ejective		ʦ’		ʧ’
Fricative			s	ɬ	ʃ		x	h
Nasal		m	n
Approximant				l	j	w	ʍ

Words

• mì:ʔskaʔ - one
• kà:ʔm - two
• xìpiní - three
• kamkàm - four
• dé:hal - five
• haʔi:mìʔs - six
• haʔi:kà:ʔm - seven
• haʔi:xín - eight
• haʔi:kó - nine
• ìxti:l - ten

References

• Sapir, Edward. 1909. Takelma Texts. University of Pennsylvania Anthropological Publications 2(1):1-263.
• Sapir, Edward. 1922. The Takelma Language of Southwestern Oregon. In Handbook of American Indian Languages, part II, pp. 1-296. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40.